When I went in the Army, 1976, there were 2 “classes” of trainee’s RA and NG. When you went to the mess hall you called out “RA DRILL SARGENT” or “NG Drill Sargent”. When it came time for all of the pneumatic vaccines you’d line up and called out “RA DRILL SARGENT” or “NG Drill Sargent”. We, the RA’s were treated different than the NG’s in the platoon. When we got to AIT it was even worse, they actually bunked in different barracks…
So, to you regular service vet’s, do you see the Walzs’ NG career different than a RA career?
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By 1984 that was a thing of the past. NG was treated the same and had further training in Riot Control and MOUT that RA didn’t.
After AIT the NG went home to their respective units and trained 2 to 3 days a month and 2 weeks a year. Further training was there for the asking or eligibility within your MOS. 
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I joined active Army in 1977. Yes, back then RA and NG were treated different. I transitioned to IRR in 1981, then in 1984 I joined the WA Air National Guard. Stayed there as a weekend warrior and about 5 years active duty until I retired in 2000.
National Guard force in the 70s were pretty sad. A lot of the people there affiliated with NG because they couldn’t be involuntarily activated and shipped off to Viet Nam. A Guard unit had to be activated as a unit. In the 1980s, under the Reagan administration, the reserve forces were improved significantly.
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I am not a military vet and thank all who are. President Nixon saw to that when he ended the draft when I was about to graduate. I remember the NG having a recruiting table next to the RA, Navy, and Air Force in the cafeteria at school. The NG table always had the longest lines. My uncle, a couple years older than me, had just come home from his second tour of Vietnam with his groin blown out by a mortar to be spit on as he got off the plane. I was there to meet him. It was a bad time to be RA. Today, my youngest son is a 1st Lt. in the NG. He knows that at any moment his group could be shipped to who knows where. His specialty is infantry. As the RA has fallen greatly in numbers thanks to the WOKE garbage and knee pad/obiden forever wars there seems to be little difference between RA and NG, except NG still has to cover the border, civil riots, political stuff, etc…
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When I was drafted in 1966 there was no NG in sight. Back then the NG was looked at as a way to avoid combat and just play weekend warrior a couple of days a month. It appears things have changed since that time.
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I did basic and AIT at Fort Benning in 1985 as a National Guard Soldier. There was no difference in the training, except that us NG guys got a day of crowd control training.
When the wars started, my NG unit deployed in 2006 and 2011. My flight company even got deployed for the Gulf War in 1991. By 2005, all the fat boys, etc got out or retired. We became an experienced and quite professional battalion after that. We also picked up many younger guys who had left the regular Army.
Since I retired in 2014, my battalion has deployed three more times. The NG has come a long, long way since the 80s.
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I think the IRR is the sweetest deal there is in the AR.
I did serve in the State Guard for a while, which is like the NG only we couldn’t be deployed outside the State.
For some odd reason, the RA preferred State Guard personnel for weapons qualifying AR and NG units before being deployed overseas.
I never was able to understand that, exactly.
We also ran OPFOR exercises for the AR and NG.
That Walz quipped that the NG are “teenagers that cook” during the Summer of Love is a grave insult unbecoming a CSM, even an acting CSM.
If I were an officer in Walz’s former outfit, I’d have to think *good riddance! *
What a prick.
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Well he was right but he forgot
Teenagers that are SF
Teenagers that are Rangers
Teenagers that are Warriors
Teenagers that HAVE fought in Combat Zones
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